As my readers you should be aware that I have been blogging about the Chevy Volt and some of its issues. Mike, over at Confederate Yankee, has been also looking at this electric vehicle, giving a very critical review of the future prospects for the Chevy Volt. We have brought up issues like travel distance, comfort of the vehicle, rat troubles, time it takes to fully charge the vehicle, and several other angles.
Today, Mike takes a closer look at three issues that are bound to plague the electric car, specifically he Chevy Volt. Those three issues are:
1) The technology has not yet caught up to reality. Bottom line here is this is not even close to being ready for prime time. As we have pointed out before, it takes 8 hours to fully charge, gets only about 40 miles travel distance, and the batteries are going to EXPENSIVE to replace ($8K).
2) There is essentially no Infrastructure and No Reasonable Possibility of Building it in the Foreseeable Future. This one is a real high hurdle to overcome. And is self-defeating. With few charging stations available folks are just going to revert to using the gas engine, kind of defeating the whole purpose. And for $41K (list), that is an expensive two door gas saver with chipmunks for an engine.
3) There is Insufficient Demand. Truly, who wants a vehicle that needs to be charge ever time you run more than a couple of errands? Plus, it is small. Most of us have families that need to be hauled around to ballet classes, football practice, to the grocery store, etc. Until the other two problems are overcome, then this one will remain a problem for GM and Toyota.
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